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James Hetfield
Sign in to saveAlso known as James Alan Hetfield, Papa Het
American guitarist and singer
OverviewAI-generated
James Alan Hetfield is an American guitarist, singer, composer, and lyricist. Born on August 3, 1963, in Downey, California, he is a member of the band Metallica. His musical work spans genres including rock music, traditional heavy metal, thrash metal, and hard rock. Hetfield began his professional career in 1979 and performs with a baritone voice. He has been affiliated with record labels such as Elektra, Megaforce Records, and Blackened Recordings.
Hetfield is also recognized as an author, with works including *Art of James Hetfield*, *Messengers*, *The complete lyrics*, *Metallica : the Black Album in Black and White*, and *Reclaimed Rust*. He speaks English and holds United States citizenship. His religious worldview is identified as deism, and his copyright is represented by PRS for Music. He is also referred to by the nickname "Papa Het."
Synthesized by Vinony from 42 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, TMDb, Wikiquote, Firecrawl, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Film & TV
Downey, California, USA
James Alan Hetfield is an American musician and songwriter best known for being the co-founder, lead vocalist/rhythm guitarist and main songwriter for the American heavy metal band Metallica. Hetfield is mainly known for his intricate rhythm playing, but occasionally performs lead guitar duties and solos, both live and in the studio. Hetfield co-founded Metallica in October 1981 after answering…
Known for
- Metallica Saved My Life — Self2025
- Metallica: Studio Shit + U.K. Shenanigans — Self2025
- Metallica: Polar Beach Party — Self2025
- Metallica: Poor Swedish Me '96 — Self2025
- Metallica: On the Air (Music Videos + TV Appearances) — Self2025
- Back to the Beginning: Ozzy's Final Bow — Self2025
- Ozzy: No Escape from Now — Self2025
- Di'Anno: Iron Maiden's Lost Singer — Self2025
- The Thicket — Simon Deasy2024
- Metallica: Helping Hands Concert & Auction — Self2024
via TMDB
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Origin
- Massachusetts
- Active from
- 1963
Member of
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 17,811
- Total plays
- 65,643
Tags
Similar artists
James Hetfield is the rhythm guitarist and vocalist from the band Metallica. Hetfield was born on August 3, 1963, in Downey, Los Angeles County, California. Hetfield was 9 years old when he took his first piano lessons, before taking on his brother David's drums and finally picking up a guitar in his pre-teens. Inspired by bands such as Black Sabbath, The Beatles, Venom, Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy, Hetfield formed his first band, Obsession, in his early teens. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/James+Hetfield">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Alan
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Downey
- Occupation
- lyricist
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- deism
- Genre
- hard rock
- Instrument
- voice
- Record label
- Blackened Recordings
- Official website
- www.metallica.com
- Image
- James Hetfield 2017.jpg
- Number of children
- 3
- Voice type
- baritone
Show 9 more facts
- Commons category
- James Hetfield
- member of
- Metallica
- date of birth
- 1963-08-03
- Commons gallery
- James Hetfield
- start of work period
- 1979-00-00
- name in native language
- James Alan Hetfield
- copyright representative
- PRS for Music
- nickname
- Papa Het
- short name
- James Hetfield
Sources (7)
via Wikidata · CC0
~19 min read
Encyclopedic overview
James Alan Hetfield (born August 3, 1963) is an American musician. He is the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, co-founder, and a primary songwriter of heavy metal band Metallica. He is mainly known for his raspy voice and intricate rhythm playing, but occasionally performs lead guitar duties and solos both live and in studio. Hetfield co-founded Metallica in October 1981 after answering an advertisement by drummer Lars Ulrich in the Los Angeles newspaper The Recycler. Metallica has won 10 Grammy Awards and released 11 studio albums, three live albums, four extended plays, and 24 singles. Hetfield is often regarded as one of the greatest rhythm guitar players of all time.
In 2009, Hetfield was ranked at No. 8 in Joel McIver's book The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists and No. 24 by Hit Parader on their list of the 100 Greatest Metal Vocalists of All Time. In Guitar World's poll, Hetfield was placed as the 19th greatest guitarist of all time, as well as being placed second (along with Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett) in The 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists poll of the same magazine. Rolling Stone placed him along with bandmate Kirk Hammett as the 23rd greatest guitarist of all time.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “James Hetfield” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Gallery (10)
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